The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture (the winners – ranked)

Michael in both the darkness and the light in The Godfather (1972) – still the best film to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Here we have 85 years of Oscar winners. Though, because of the two winners in 1928 there are actually 86 winners that are ranked.

This list covers a complete ranking of all 86 of those films, from the very worst to the very best. This will be followed by two more lists: a complete ranking of all the Best Picture years and a complete ranking of all 503 films that have earned Best Picture nominations (not including the 3 that can’t readily be seen).

A brief note, which will be repeated in the next two posts: In the course of this project, in which the first post went up on 9 March 2010 and the last went up on 6 March 2013, we had three more years of Oscar races. So 28 more films got added to the Best Picture mix, which now has 506 films, 3 of which I haven’t seen. Therefore, the rankings on each individual post has fluctuated. Aside from that, because I was ranking them as I went, not knowing that some films would go up and others would go down, I was doing the best approximation I could do at the time, waiting for the eventual full list. But something else happened as well. I would re-watch the films (or watch for the first time, for the last few years) and then rate the film. So those ratings were fresh from watching the films. Sometimes that can change. I found, at least twice, when writing the actual reviews, that I had to adjust my rating based on the actual review I was writing (Five Easy Pieces and Fatal Attraction). And twice, since the reviews have been posted, I have had comments on specific films that suggested my review implied a lower rating than I had given the film (Wilson and The Towering Inferno). So, before doing this ranked list of the winners (and the other two), I have gone back and re-read all 503 of my reviews. And then I re-ranked all 503 films based on what I feel my actual review said about the film.

note: – The two years with an asterisk both have a film which I have not seen.

Years where the Academy Awards chose a film that was 5th or worse (but not the worst):

1932-33 (8th of 10)

1936 (7th of 10)

1939 (5th of 10)

1941 (6th of 10)

1942 (5th of 10)

Winner ranked lowest in its individual year: Braveheart (98th out of 125)

Decades, by average finish:

1920’s – 54.0

1930’s – 57.4

1940’s – 43.4

1950’s – 48.0

1960’s – 38.2

1970’s – 34.8

1980’s – 48.6

1990’s – 35.5

2000’s – 42.7

2010’s – 31.0

There are three fantastic streaks. From 1960-62, we have three winners in the Top 20, and then from 1990-93 we have four straight in the Top 28. Aside from those stretches, you never have two consecutive films in the Top 20. By far the worst is the back-to-back years of 51-52 (#76 and #84).

“What is Gloria Grahame doing in this film? I can understand James Stewart. He’s just relaxing, enjoying himself, and besides, he’s hidden under all that makeup. But Grahame is a real actress and shouldn’t be anywhere near crap like this. In fact, in the same year that she starred in this, she was winning Best Supporting Actress for her amazing performance in The Bad and the Beautiful.”

“The acting is terrible, all throughout, and most especially with Gibson. It is true that he didn’t originally want to star but that was the only way to get the studio money. But did he have to be so awful?”

“It must have seemed creepy even then, a lecherous old man singing “Thank Heaven For Little Girls.” How could that possibly feel right? I mean, we are talking about Maurice Chevalier here. He’s not exactly the kindly old Grandpa type.”

“Cavalcade is the second lowest ranked Best Picture on the IMDb and that’s not quite fair. It’s not a bad movie, like Broadway Melody or Cimarron (the only one ranked lower). It’s not even a vastly over-rated mediocre film like Gigi or Braveheart. What it is, is an exceedingly boring film. It takes everything that can be dull about a play and makes it worse by expanding it for the film.”

“I remember being confused when the Golden Globe nominations were announced and Driving Miss Daisy was in the Comedy / Musical category. It seemed like a dry, stuffy drama, the kind of thing people love on stage but doesn’t really come to life as a film. Rewatching it for the first time in over 20 years, I see it now. It’s a comedy. Not a laugh-out-loud comedy or even a comedy of manners, but a human comedy about two very different people and how they actually mesh. I think even less of it now then I did then.”

“It’s one of those films that won Best Picture because of the size of the production, because it was a big money-maker, and of course, because it was an MGM film at the time when they ruled everything.”

“But in the end, it is too long, too much of a mess, too badly written and there just isn’t enough to hold it together. It vexes me. But I’m not terribly vexed, because that’s just a stupid thing to say.”

“Leslie Caron is decidedly odd-looking and that she should so inspire the fierce passions of Gene Kelly, Louis Jourdan and Horst Buchholz in two Best Picture winners and a Best Picture nominee is outside of my scope of understanding. But then, there are many things about this film that kind of boggle my mind.”

“Clearly they were trying to bring us into empathy with Nash’s issues, but I reacted violently against the way they did it. And once that spell was broken, it was easy to see the other parts of the film that clearly weren’t really happening and any suspension of disbelief was gone, fading away into mist like the hallucinations don’t ever seem to. ”

“For all the disdain it is not a bad film like Cimarron or The Broadway Melody, nor is it a mediocre film like The Greatest Show on Earth or Braveheart. It is an enjoyable film, a solid *** film that is most certainly too long and has no need to be so (the novel itself is a scant 192 pages).”

“If you watch Forrest Gump, you get a small little Idiot’s Guide to Recent American History and learn absolutely nothing. And if it didn’t want to be so damn sincere about it all it really could have been a wicked good time – a satire on the modern era. Instead, it’s a chance for everyone to feel good.”

“But the biggest problem, right at the heart of the film, is Mark Lester as Oliver. If he had been cast for his voice, then that would have made sense, for he is quite terrible. He embraces all the problems with child actors – he stands around and lets things happen to him, reacts pathetically, doesn’t ever seem to realize the film he is in and is just generally irritating.”

“That Wings is considered the first Best Picture winner when the category it won was “Best Production” rather than “Artistic Quality of Production” says something about what the Academy Awards stand for.”

“But as a film, it never quite rises above, never really earns its Best Picture win. It’s still just a standard biopic, a good film, but not a great one. It’s so hard to really make a great biopic, even when the performances are good.”

“In short, it was everything the Academy loves to reward – especially since it is not exactly the kind of thing that hauls in buckets of cash and this kind of prestige makes the Academy look like they are rewarding art instead of just the popular thing of the moment.”

“Watching it today on DVD, it’s interesting to note the ways in which the film shines and the flaws that permeate throughout. On the one hand, Stallone’s script feels very real; the characters talk like actual people and they really seem like they are from the neighborhood that they are in. On the other hand, it is cliche-ridden from start to finish.”

“According to Tag Gallagher’s book on John Ford, two of the key ideas on the film came from Darryl F. Zanuck. Those two ideas, the idea of a narrator and the notion that Huw shouldn’t age through the course of the film, mean that we can forgive Ford the two biggest problems with watching the film today.”

“There’s the great scene where Patton directs his driver to an ancient Roman battlefield and talks about the life that he lived before, the wars he had already fought. If only we got a bit more of that. That Patton seems so much more interesting.”

“It works because no one is better at playing this kind of righteous part than Gregory Peck. There was never a whole lot of depth to Peck’s performances and that was why he was never particularly effective in his few roles as villains. But he is perfect to play the hero, the man struggling to right the wrongs of the world.”

“So what do we have overall? A film that barely achieves greatness, that really has had greatness thrust upon it, that was a magnificent triumph for its producer of hard work, talent and acting. It’s simply too bad that it’s wasted on such a ridiculous story with such thinly written characters set in a period that is better left in the past.”

“Then there is of course, the chariot race. It is a triumph of film spectacle even if it does go on for too long. But it is well directed, well paced. We can keep track of all the action and we are at the edge of our seats. While Ben-Hur might not make it into the top 50 of the Best Picture winners, it is well crafted entertainment.”

“Midnight Cowboy is far from a perfect film, but in its performances, in the new style of film-making that captured the underside of New York City, in the moments that instantly established it as a film to be remembered (“I’m walkin here!”), it does become a great film.”

“What it comes down to is this. This is a great film. It is funny, charming and endearing. The scene where Colbert stops the car is still one of the most famous scenes in film history. The ending is perfect, doing exactly what was possible under the code. It is well written, well acted, well directed. It works just as well now as it did in 1934. What more do you need?”

“So many child actors, especially boys, are so awful, but he really is quite good in all of his scenes – especially the scene where he asks a co-worker of Ted’s if she likes fried chicken. That scene, unbelievably funny, seems like exactly what would happen in that circumstance. So does much of the film, for that matter, and perhaps that is the key to its success.”

“His performance is much like his favorite team – the Showtime Lakers of the 1980′s – run and gun and run and gun and wear down the opponent until they can’t do anything else except try to keep up and fail. But Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched, well, she is something else all together. She is much more like Riley’s Knicks of the mid-nineties – her defense will keep you from doing anything until you are so frustrated you just want to shoot yourself.”

“Is it the best film of 1973? Not even close. It is a great film and it is great entertainment – one of the most enjoyable of all the Best Picture winners. But even if we were to ignore the fact that Cries and Whispers and The Exorcist are better films (both nominated) as is Mean Streets (not nominated), even if we were to think of it in pure entertainment value (and there is a measure of that in the Oscars), it still wouldn’t quite be able to match up to American Graffiti. But it is a great film, well-made, well-directed, well-written, well-acted and it is a lot of fun and it isn’t that often that the Academy chooses something that encompasses all of that.”

“It has great acting, it looks amazing and it never fails to entertain. So what if it’s only the seventh best film of the year. So what if that makes it, in the best year ever for Best Picture nominees, the weakest film of the year. ”

“In 1967, when filmgoers got to the point where Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger go to confront the rich man in town that they feel might be mixed up in the murder they are both investigating and the rich, old racist slaps Poitier across the face and Poitier slaps him back, hard, it must have been shocking. Today, it is less shocking then exhilarating. And while contemporary viewers must have been waiting for an explosion (certainly the man himself wishes he could explode, telling Poitier how he could have had him hung for that), what’s more interesting today is his reaction once the two officers leave. He breaks down. He can not believe that the world has changed so much that his old ways no longer hold sway. I love seeing that look and I look forward to more people who still hold on to their ignorant beliefs having that look cross their face as they look around the world and can no longer act the way they used to be able to.”

“Perhaps only in 1963 could Tom Jones have won Best Picture. It is one of those rare Comedy winners (it wouldn’t happen again for another 10 years), but it was so clearly the best of the nominees that even the Academy couldn’t screw this one up.”

“It is a great film, well-written, well-made with excellent acting, most notably the Oscar winning performance by Paul Scofield as Thomas More, a performance filled with immense dignity and clarity. But it seems to lack passion. In a sense it wants to be too cerebral. Perhaps it is good that Robert Shaw comes in to the middle of the film to liven things up a bit.”

“If you have any doubts about Billy Wilder as a director, just look at this film. Look at the amazing performance by Ray Milland, the first one to win the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics, the Golden Globe and the Oscar and wouldn’t happen again for another decade. Then look at it in comparison with the entirety of Milland’s career. Did Milland, ever, in all those decades in film, do anything even close to this?”

“Look at many of the camera shots. They start out from farther away, and only slowly move in towards the characters and the action. This is much like the film itself – by the time we start, not only has the older brother already died, but the suicide attempt and the following hospitalization of the younger brother has also already past. We start from farther away and slowly move towards the characters.”

“And if he can’t function in the world, is incapable of being father or husband, and if he finds happiness where he needs to be, out with death in the desert sands, then isn’t really the best place to end and can’t we call that a happy ending and at least have some measure of happiness for one person – that he is doing what he loves where he wants to be?”

“We are reminded this time of Casablanca and how the only proper ending is not the one with love reunited. That is the brilliance of it all. We got both the ending we want and the ending it should have and neither side feels cheated. ”

#31 – Argo (2012, dir. Ben Affleck)

“It is a measure of how good Argo is that I knew exactly what the outcome of the opening scenes was going to be and I was still riveted to my seat. In fact, as Veronica said, “I don’t think I could have watched the film and dealt with it if I hadn’t known that all those people came out of there alive.””

“Rebecca is one of the greats in the long treasured Hitchcock film library (I rank it third behind Strangers on a Trainand Rear Window), a magnificent film that is at once a romance, a drawing room mystery and a thriller.”

“Had The King’s Speech come out in 2011, I not only think it would have won the Oscar, but it probably would have won without a lot of argument about its quality. Though The Artist, Hugo and The Descendents are great films, I would rank The King’s Speech above all of them and I suspect, if critics were to stop and think about the film for what it is, rather than what they perceive it to be in relation to Social Network, then they would too.”

“What do the following films have in common: The Best Years of Our Lives, All About Eve, The French Connection, The Godfather Part II, Annie Hall, Terms of Endearment, Platoon, Dances with Wolves and The English Patient all have in common? Well, they all won Best Picture, of course. And none of them were my own personal choice for Best Picture (Children of Paradise, Sunset Boulevard, A Clockwork Orange, Chinatown, Star Wars, Fanny and Alexander, Hannah and Her Sisters, GoodFellas and Lone Star were). But what they really have in common is that I can’t really complain that much that any of them won. They all reached a certain level of quality above where I draw the line for Best Picture winner. Even if they weren’t the best film of the year, they were at a good enough level that winning the Oscar is justifiable.”

“We move through that train station, and interspersed with the credits (with them showing us the actors as they list them, which should be demanded by law) we get that wonderful dance number to the song “Jai Ho”, one of the single best original songs written for a film in the last 20 years. And that stays with you and stays and stays. It is written.”

“And then we get that plea, “Do it for me,” as one man asks another to go through hell because it’s the only chance they have, and then, just as we finally get that title, we also get the Boston music, the music of this city, the music that inspires thoughts of the Irish, of drinking, of violence, of everything Boston that this film entails.”

“When Little Bill is lying on the ground, complaining that he doesn’t deserve to die like this, it was Eastwood the director who told Eastwood the actor not to smile, not to give even a hint of satisfaction like Dirty Harry would have had when he gives that fateful line and pulls that trigger, the line that sums up so much about this film: “Deserve’s got nothin to do with it.” ”

“It runs up against Fanny and Alexander so it doesn’t take home Picture or Director from me, but damn if it isn’t close. It’s still enjoyable, still brilliant, even after all this time. And I still seem to fall in love with Debra Winger.”

“And the dream doesn’t go anywhere, and then he woke up and then the film ends, just as the book ended, and we are reminded that sometimes there is a lot of sound and a lot of fury and it doesn’t signify anything. But with writing like this, directing like this, incredible acting like this, phenomenal editing (the construction of the story requires great editing), great cinematography, everything can fit together and it doesn’t have to signify anything. Sometimes you just wake up”

“It’s a great film, through and through, a magnificent triumph of the best that Hollywood had to offer in terms of story-telling, direction, acting and technical film-making. It deserved those Oscars. After all, the Academy does get things right sometimes.”

“There is a wonderful moment with the brothers – Tom, Fredo, Sonny, Michael – all sitting around arguing about Michael’s announcement of having joined the Marines. Soon, it will only be Michael, alone in his decision and we move forward some 25 years and there is Michael, still alone in his decisions.”

“So many films make the excitement, the adrenalene of war obvious. There are few films that truly make apparent the waste and insanity of war and perhaps only All Quiet on the Western Front does this as well as Platoon.”

“In the published version of the screenplay, it then says “And that’s about it. Story-wise.” And that’s right. We don’t need a sentimental kiss or even an acknowledgment. It’s gone as far as it should and it ends.”

“Which brings us back to the desert, back to that tender moment that the two of them share, lit only by a flare in the desert night sky, bringing them help and security. He believes that this touch is all he has, until after they return to Cairo and she returns to him, beautiful and angelic in a white dress and their passion for each other overwhelms their senses.”

“This is the shadow of American suburbia: the jobs that make us feel trapped, the marriages that feel dead and make us search for what made them alive in the first place, the alienation between generations, the breakdown of communication, yet all of it hidden behind that facade of the beautiful house with the beautiful roses out front. ”

“Is there a more deliciously snarky character in all of film history than Addison DeWitt? As he is so sublimely played by George Sanders, he comes in and takes over All About Eve (actually, he had it from the beginning, seeing as how he is the opening narrator) and never lets go. ”

“Though it doesn’t win any of my awards, not a single one of its seven Oscars could be said to be undeserved. It is one of the great films in American history and one of the the few films that really fit the bill for a Pulitzer Prize. How many films say this much about American life?”

“That is why this film works so well. Because it doesn’t just give us a typical film. It does it in a new and interesting way and when Salieri is wheeled through the room at the end, we can feel some absolution from his plea: “Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you.” ”

“That brilliant ending, with that brilliant line is nowhere to be found in the book. We can thank the makers of the film for giving us that eternally happy, yet disturbing ending, of Hannibal walking down the street after his old nemesis having uttered one of the great lines in movie history: “I’m having an old friend for dinner.” ”

“You might not like Woody Allen much, or his acting style, or even his New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual style of humor. But we all do go through these relationships and unless we get lucky (like I have), we keep going through them again and again no matter how irrational, crazy or absurd they might seem. Because, let’s face it. Most of us need the eggs.”

” “The list is life.” That is what Schindler is told early on and that is the counter to those who would criticize the film. Yes, as some critics put it, only Spielberg would have women go into the showers at Auschwitz and actually have water come out rather than gas. But they are missing the point. This film is not about the 6 million who died. It is about the 1100 who lived.”

#4 – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, dir. Peter Jackson)

“And yet, with the destruction of the ring, not all is over in the film. Because part of what is so important here is that Frodo sets out to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for him. So we need that final scene, the real ending of the film, on the shores of Middle Earth, those cleansing tears, not evil ones.”

“It is a triumph of pure film-making, made at a time when people were willing to go see it. It was made in 70 mm and it looks it, every inch. It is a reason to go see films in the theater and if you don’t have the patience to sit through 216 minutes of this film in the theater then really, how much do you love the movies?”

“This is the heart of the film – the light of Kay and a life away from the family that Michael was striving towards and the life of darkness, inherited from his father, the inheritance that he now claims, and when the film ends with those haunting words “Don Corleone” and the final shot is of his wife having the door shut upon her, the darkness has completely claimed him.”

I take the list of all the BP nominees and go through and quickly rate them all on a 0-100 scale. I then copy these ‘2013’ rankings onto the master excel doc that has similar rankings going back years. I then average all the rankings and compute a standard deviation. I sort the films by the average and ties are broken by the SD. I make sure each new ranking is done without looking at any of the previous rankings, and I only do this once a year. It takes a while for some reassessments to work their way up, for instance, annie hall I’ve reassessed upwards quite a lot, so the list is not perfect, I could probably adjust it, but I think this more objective and untweaked list is more interesting than my subjectively tugging films around

about 61 of the winners are at least films that rate at least a 8 which is pretty darn good.

Then I have to figure out what the 0-100 converts to on the 10 pt scale I use to rate films in my everyday viewing, so I’ve come up with

18 Forrest Gump
19 Rebecca
20 Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
21 Marty
22 My Fair Lady
23 Departed, The
24 Chariots of Fire
25 Man For All Seasons
26 Argo
27 Sting, The
28 Gone with the Wind
29 Gladiator
30 All Quiet on the Western Front
31 Ben-Hur
32 It Happened One Night
33 Shakespeare in Love
34 You Can’t Take it With You
35 Amadeus
36 English Patient
37 The King’s Speech
38 Artist, The
39 In the Heat of the Night
40 Mrs. Miniver
41 French Connection
42 On the Waterfront